Digital Print Experimentations

As I can't produce my project on a risograph printer and after receiving positive feedback from my risograph imitations during the silent crit and tutor crit, I continued to further develop this idea of combining bitmapping and layering to create more visually interesting content that imitates the way the images would have been treated for risograph printing, and also pushing the boundaries of what's conventional with digital printing as now I don't have the limits of risograph.

Photoshop edits

I began by applying bitmaps and exploring potential colours for my book based on the feedback as the colours do affect the bitmap once printed as the dots are quite small and a darker colour would create enough contrast to highlight this effect. However, I don't want my book to be all dark so I did test other values. 

The first image is of a more simple layout and design that I am planning on using in my book and is continuing the layouts I showed during my crit as I got positive feedback about this working with my theme. The dark forest green worked the best as it references nature therefore combined with the bitmap on a textural paper stock really emphasises the texture I am trying to convey.

I then applied this same method to my grid and this was important as the grid also included text and I needed to explore how bitmapping would affect text if I were to include some - conclusion is that the fine bitmapping doesn't really affect text however the text were important and large and to be read, it would affect the reader's experience as it's not as easy to read.

There were more files however I didn't save many of the images after altering them to print.

Outcomes and Feedback

The general consensus of the feedback was that this method worked for my book. My worry was that it was too basic to just place images as I was leaning towards not including text in my book however was told by Dom that it's ok because of the way the images were treated giving it more impact and the overall effect of looking almost screenprinted is more interesting than just original images. But the book should be more developed and experimental than just these centre-placed images on every page as then that will become too limiting for my theme.

Most liked the prints on white paper as the bitmapping was clearer and it was less limiting on my control of the colour however Dom really liked the orange paper - my issue with this paper stock is it was too fine and absorbent therefore the image isn't as clear.

People liked the combination of the purple, green and blue but suggested maybe one more bright colour for contrast.

Scanning and Printing Overtop
My second method was to more directly imitate risograph printing by having layers of separate colours print ontop of one another separately. I did this by using scans of my outcomes from the image manipulation workshop, and printing blocks of colours overtop as this is more like the process a risograph printer uses as they use different plates. I kept the shapes really simple - large rectangles that cover the whole page or shapes that can apply to any image as with a risograph, the plates would be reusable but the ink/colour can change therefore wanted the colour plate design to be something simple.

The outcomes are really cool and visually interesting as it's clear that the paper has been passed through the printer twice as the ink sits differently however I don't like the lack of control over where the second print is going to be and how difficult it is to get the block colours perfectly in place. I also don't like the limitations of this - only one colour can be added on each page as another pass would make the colours go muddy especially in areas they all overlapped as the digital print ink isn't actually thick blocks of colours but rather spots of CMYK that create the illusions of colour.

I was only successful with the first purple print as the printed colour was not a block - it was a duotoned image placed ontop of the letterpress scan. Based on this, I should further develop a method in which duotoned images are layered ontop one another possibly multiple colours.